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ohhla still sucks after all these years · by Rafi Kam
Update August 2007
It’s been a long time coming but a change gonna come!
Admirably, OHHLA owner DJ Flash came around and has commissioned me to fix the problems that I cited in my OHHLA posts. These changes are currently in development but I’ll post all about them when the new and infinitely less sucky OHHLA is ready to launch. Please keep this turn of events in mind as you read the post below.
*********
Ten years, man!
You probably already know this scene from Grosse Point Blank. The one where Jeremy Piven just can’t get his head around the fact that he has no idea what his old high school buddy John Cusack has been up to for the past ten years.
This pretty much sums up how I feel about OHHLA (The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive). OHHLA was created by Steve ‘Flash’ Juon who with the help of Al Gore and funding from ArpaNet invented internet rap in 1979. In 1995 Juon launched OHHLA and shortly thereafter his site was considered the de facto source for rap lyrics online. If you’re looking at rap lyrics online, even at other sites, chances are they originated at OHHLA.
The problem is… OHHLA lyrics are terribly inaccurate, impossible to search, and no efficient tool for correcting them exists. The fact that these essential problems have been left unaddressed shows you what kind of crap you can get away when you own the market.
As a result erroneous rap lyrics spread all over the world and along with them the idea that rap songs were supposed to house a bunch of bullshit that made no sense.
Ten years, man! TEN YEARS!
Here’s just one example (feel free to add your own):
On the transcription of the Nas song Doo Rags, OHHLA quotes the line
There’s still a lot of nigger-callin’ in the corporate offices
as
There’s still a lot of naked crawlin in the corporate offices
And that’s after they corrected it. The first version they had said
There’s still a lot of naked crawlin in the carpeted offices
as if Nas was warning us about the risk of rug-burn.
OHHLA is chock-full-of-errors yet I see them linked to everywhere and saluted all over the place. Yes they do have an impressive volume of data but what the hell are they doing with it? There should be a better search facility, a means of correcting lyrics, commenting on songs, annotations, and so on.
There’s a link at their homepage to the anti-biter’s campaign where they and other lyrics sites speak about how people claiming their transcriptions is a major problem for them. Are they kidding? For one thing, you didn’t write these songs, you wrote them down. Who are you to call others out for posting your material when it’s not really your material? The problem is yours for still believing that you should have some priest class of transcribers/approvers instead of opening it all up to get the best information possible through a “smart mob” approach.
Hip-hop definitely needs an archive. As fans we put up with this one because it’s been the best to come along so far but believe me it could be easily replaced by someone who built a smarter system. If it was profitable and didn’t involve potential legal hassles from the music publishing industry, I’m sure it would already have been done because there is an opportunity for someone to fill that void.
And if someone does build a better lyrics archive, it’s not unlikely that they’ll use OHHLA transcriptions as a starting point. As a programmer, I look at all that data and how it’s not being used properly and those songs look like a big ol’ feast to me. It looks like Christmas dinner.
If someone came along and took all those lyrics and used them as the starting point for a better system, one that could be corrected and offer meta-information and cross-referencing and commenting and such, what would OHHLA do? Accuse them of “biting” all these songs that OHHLA doesn’t own?
Get on your game Flash. If you address these problems you’ll make a lot of hip-hop fans happy. If you don’t then you’re leaving yourself very open for someone else to make them happy.
Comments for "ohhla still sucks after all these years"
We’re already discussing this on AIM, but I wanted to publically comment on this article. I totally agree with your critique here. This has been a pet-peeve of mine for a long time. There was a time when I actively sent in corrections when I found things that were just glaringly wrong. I even adressed my problems with Juon at one point during a message board discussion. But of course the situation hasn’t improved. I still consult OHHLA on occasion, but if and when I do I usually take the trascription and compare it against the song to make corrections before I use it for quotes or something. In this day and age there’s no reason that the site doesn’t use a Wiki format that makes the entries user editable and easily corrected. This would also leave corrections and interpretations of the lyrics and their meaning up for discussion as well, which would open up a whole other realm of apprecation for the lyrics.
Anyway, thanks for posting this. I’m glad I’m not the only one who notices these things
— El Keter ben Tzadik May 7, 04:24 AM
Yup, Keter nailed it right on the head with the Wiki format.
In fact, it would probably take about a day to write a program that grabs all of ohhla’s content and dumps it into a fresh Wiki.
— Beek May 7, 12:03 PM
Yeah a wiki is what I’d been thinking about as well for the least amount of development time. Maybe we should consider building something together.
— rafi May 7, 01:34 PM
I pretty much always use a site-specific google search when I need something from there.
Or just skip ohhla altogether…
— David May 7, 03:13 PM
Good Shit RAFI, you have to check yourself with any lyric site although I often don’t bother when I am quoting CAM’RON because that nigger says shit that makes no fucking sense
— dp May 7, 04:16 PM
instead of starting with OHHLA, you can start with the source. ASCAP and BMI must have the lyrics written down somewhere . Maybe there’s a way to request it.
— Hashim May 7, 08:19 PM
i feel it..but on the flip side theve been a great asset for emcees and hiphop fans who want to get lyrics of artists not posted in booklets
— Small Eyez May 7, 09:41 PM
Yup . . . I did a post on part of this problem (http://escobartheory.blogspot.com/2006/04/we-all-can-escape.html), looking at Nas, as you referenced, and the Just A Moment remix. There the “transcriber” confused “Ballantine Ale” for “Valentine Nail”, “blunt” somehow with “shit”, and changed the last line of ” we all can escape” into “we all can’t escape.” Eventually Flash actually did make the corrections, credited them to me, but still overly-ebonicized “niggas” with a “z”, which is another problem I have with the site.
Maybe when I get real rich and have lots of free time, I’ll start my own site. (Actually if we got a gang of people willing and organized, with access to all the songs, I’d be play a role.)
Project Transcript (a la Fight Club)
— fletch May 7, 11:41 PM
or you could do what we used to do before the internet (oh what a glorious time filled with vhs porn, and dubbed tapes with hiss, and actual phone conversations or letters…) and make up your own lyrics and sing them as loud as you want to with no shame.
i can remember 18 different versions of “relax yourself girl, please settle down”.
now everybody is all obsessed with knowing. but ignorance is bliss.
— kimani May 8, 08:51 AM
Well, I agree with the misquoted items on OHHLA. However, the amount of errors does not surpass the accurate lyrics on most of the songs. It is the premiere site for lyrics- so gotta give them that. But instead of complaining, why not either venture to another site, or create one of your own.
— Rocky aka Lovely May 8, 01:05 PM
I have thought about creating a wiki for (rap) lyrics for a long time.
Drop me an email if you really think about realizing such a project.
flatone
— flatone May 9, 02:11 PM
Jaylib (madlib & Jdilla)
THE RED: according to ohhla.com:
Turn It up, y’all niggaz must be outta head
If ya sister made it up to the bed?
I’m pretty sure it’s:
“if your sytem ain’t up to the red”
due to the fact that the track is entitled “the red”, and what’s sad is, that on every the red lyrics page you find on the net, it’s wrong because its from ohhla…
— mina May 9, 04:04 PM
I will happily make all the corrections in this thread and any more submitted to my e-mail address.
C’mon people, it’s not like I won’t fix it if you don’t ask me to. What “sucks” is when people complain yet don’t bother to say it to me personally or request that I fix it.
— DJ Flash Jun 20, 02:11 PM
Incidentally I tried to contact El Keter ben Tzadik but apparently his site has exceeded bandwidth, so if somebody will pass this along (http://megamanfan.livejournal.com/2006/06/02/) THIS is the reason I don’t Wikify OHHLA. It’s not the solution to the problem, it’s an even BIGGER problem. I’ve just posted 20 lyric corrections and updates and I’m soliciting more – in fact I’m gonna go work on some overdue EPMD ones right now.
— DJ Flash Jun 20, 05:33 PM
“In fact, it would probably take about a day to write a program that grabs all of ohhla’s content and dumps it into a fresh Wiki”
You mean something like this?
http://www.hhlyrics.com
Doesn’t have all the features that it could…but it’s better than OHHLA right now. And the team seems to be working on new features.
— iQue Jun 22, 06:45 PM
Nice to see all of their new lyrics are all of the new lyrics posted on OHHLA in the last month. A+ for creativity and originality.
— DJ Flash Jun 22, 07:00 PM
But Flash, they’re not your lyrics either…
— Rafi Jun 22, 07:02 PM
I don’t believe I used an ownership pronoun in that post or said they were “my” lyrics. However, you’ll note that the way I TYPED THEM is indeed unique to me, including how I wrote “Death as portrayed by Busta Rhymes” in “Legend of the Fall Offs.” They didn’t bother to change the notations I add to lyric transcriptions one bit.
— DJ Flash Jun 22, 07:04 PM
But if you don’t own the lyrics then what’s the difference?
What’s wrong with them using your transcription of someone else’s lyrics as a starting point for their wiki page?
— Rafi Jun 22, 07:07 PM
Nobody said it’s wrong, it’s just not ORIGINAL – double entendre definitely intended. And for the record the reason lyrics on OHHLA have a typist credit is not to denote ownership but to respect the effort of people taking the time to sit down in front of their computer and type it out to begin with.
— DJ Flash Jun 22, 07:14 PM
original? mosaic was the original browser.. does anybody care anymore?
i don’t even remember the name of the company that invented contextual advertising in the late 90s but the ORIGINAL company wasn’t google. but google ran with it… do you think they showed sufficient respect to the company that had the idea first?
of course people will steal your transcriptions… there’s 30,000 of them… why should they start with zero?
I’m telling you this as a friend… if you don’t adapt your transcriptions into a better system. Someone else will adapt your transcriptions into a better system.
— Rafi Jun 22, 07:22 PM
I’m not saying a better system with a searchable database isn’t a good idea, but I still haven’t seen these three questions answered to my satisfaction:
1) Why wikify it as opposed to some other solution that’s less destructive to content?
2) Why make it searchable when MP3 lyric injectors will use it, making me more vulnerable to infringement?
3) Who keeps MC Farty Pants from claiming himself as equal to Chuck D when anyone can make updates?
4) Who here doesn’t think a site like hhlyrics wouldn’t dry up if I never added anything new to OHHLA?
— DJ Flash Jun 22, 07:28 PM
Whoops that’s four not three. ;)
— DJ Flash Jun 22, 07:29 PM
1) Wikifying isn’t destructive to content, every page has version control where you can restore from prior changes. If 98% of your editors are trying to help you and 2% want to be destructive then those 2% won’t get very far. People aren’t going to come to your site en masse to fuck things up… the wiki model is proven.
As Hashim said you can also control who can edit (but I wouldn’t rule out trying more open access).
As I’ve said before you can also use a customized database app instead of a wiki to still allow for easier editing and user contributions. Like just as an example, corrections get suggested but don’t become official. If people agree they can mark them as such, that way you get a nice list of what to look at sorted by who / how many agreeing with these changes being made.
2) Can you explain this one. I don’t follow.. Are you saying the reason you dont have search is so the publishers dont get you in legal trouble? They can still find you through google, right? Is lack of a site search whats protecting you from the law right now?
3) Chuck D and U-God aren’t equals either but they’re both on your site right? Stop hating on farty pants! Nah but seriously either a) stop hating and consider allowing every farty pants because why shouldnt they be up there… or b) instate a policy that you need to have what? a record out? (so no mixtape mc’s????) and let that be site policy and your editors will enforce it. your stuck on this trivial point for some reason. either chill out and allow it for the added happy users or dont allow it and your editors will handle it.
4) hhlyrics you’re right about because people wont start using a site just because it’s a wiki… they only have value if they have a crowd… but there are things that could make them grow a crowd like value-added items (better discographies, bios, sample information, song analysis, interpretations, connections a la the imdb) or multiple genres or some far more popular blogger dissing you :-) i think you’re safe for now but for how long… see chart
— Rafi Jun 22, 07:43 PM
I wouldn’t be surprised to see lyricwiki exceed OHHLA simply because they’re not genre specific like I am; but I do agree that complacency is not an acceptable place to be.
Not being searchable to date has in fact covered my ass in a lot of ways but if it’s either do it or become irrelevant and die then it’s a risk that I’m willing to take.
I do have a policy that states you have to have a record out in stores or to the public (say XM Radio) in a large scale way, that’s why artists like MC Farty Pants aren’t published. A wikified site would have to maintain that standard to keep me satisfied – OHHLA is not a free promotional tool for people who aren’t good enough to get on in the first place.
— DJ Flash Jun 22, 07:49 PM
the problem is that, DJ Flash doesn’t know how to do a wiki format, he has always been a beginner of html, even after 10 years he never bothered to learn it, how do I know this? I’m his cousin! Trust me, he won’t do it, he actually told me he’s waiting for Google to come around and buy him off so he can become rich, well, keep waiting cuz.
— machado Oct 23, 01:13 PM
machado,
You may not have read the update at the top of the post but a revamped OHHLA is on its way. Flash contracted me to do the work and it’s in development currently.
— rafi Oct 23, 04:03 PM